How this law suit is handled will have ramifications in governance and race
relations far beyond the borders of Minneapolis. The ignoring of the problems
by the Mayor/City Hall and the Chief/MPD, are chickens that are now coming home
to roost.

And remember, the suit is not about the discrimination of not hiring enough
Blacks (although, as we will see, trying to avoid it by the city contributes
to the internal problems). This law suit is about four forms of internal,
on the job discrimination: (1) career advancement/promotions,
(2) job benefits like training/assignments/overtime, (3)
creating a hostile environment that promotes esprit de corp for whites
at the exclusion of the Blacks when any paramilitary force only works well when
all members are integrated into the team, regardless of color or gender or creed,
and (4) being again put "in their place" by having the truth
of their grievances dismissed by the city's black Civil Rights Department Director
as merely being that of "disgruntled cops near the end of their
careers."

As no one has yet figured out how to get around the appearance of discrimination,
a rule of statistics is used that suggests that any department would have, as
a percentage of its members, the same percentage of the group as in the population.

The department maintains that 18% are minorities. Most people will read
that and say, hey, there are only 12% Blacks in this country and here they have
18% Black cops, so what's the beef?

It doesn't work that way. First of all, cities have more blacks than
suburbs. Thus, Minneapolis city has nearly 20% Blacks (whereas Detroit, by contrast,
is 81% Black and Atlanta 70%). This means that there should be nearly
20% in the police department. The 18% "people of color" would seem to
be "close enough."

But that figure is a lie.

And its perception of being about Blacks is a lie.

It has taken us a long time to get the information from the department, but
the PCRC finally obtained a list of officers by race (and note these are self-designated,
so we don't know how many non-Blacks are using the category in order to get
a job).

White Non-Hispanic (62.5%)
Black (18.0%)
Hispanic (7.6%)
Two or more races (4.4%)
Other race (4.1%)
Other Asian (3.6%)
American Indian (3.3%)
Chinese (0.6%)
Vietnamese (0.6%)(Total can be greater than 100% because Hispanics could be counted in other
races)

As you can see, the 18% figure refers to "minorities," not
people of color. And people of color often refers now not to Blacks but
to Asians, Hispanics, American Indians, etc.

And so Minneapolis continues to try to reduce the number of Blacks in the police
force. Of the people of color, or minorities, on the police force, less
than half are Black. The number of Blacks is closer to 7.5%. The
rest, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, are listed due to self-classification.
We applaud the inclusion of Hispanic, Native Americans, and Asians, and
respect these brothers and sisters of color. But that is not the point.

So lets look at how these liars are lying with figures, hiding behind the skirt
of another lie: that figures don't lie.

The
underlying dynamic has not changed since 1880 when there were only 262 Blacks
in Minneapolis: paternalism, even by enlightened leaders, even Wheatley
House settlement house reformers. Paternalism is the liberal nice-word
for plantation bosses. 1930: 4,176 Blacks.
In 1923, Minneapolis had 10 Ku Klux Klan chapters, as this small number instilled
in the town fear, paternalism and prejudice. Minneapolis was also identified
as one of the most anti - Semitic cities
in the country.

The Star Tribune would have you believe this all started 9-11-07, that it is
isolated, and due to the bungling of Michael Jordan. He served at City's
table but is expendable so they are making his "mistakes" the reason.

They lie.

All Jordan was doing was what he was told to do by the Mayor.

That he didn't stand up for the mission of his department is troubling.
But he is but one more in a long line of servants of a city that fights integration
and fights the equal access and equal opportunity that integration implies.

This law suit's beginning wasn't 9-11-07 but from 1920 when restrictive immigrations
quotas opened up jobs for Blacks previously given to mostly European immigrants
now restricted. Minneapolis response to this northern migration
of Negroes was segregating, not integrating, and the opportunities of welcome
and integration began their patterns of postponement and sabotage.

9/11 with Jordan was merely the straw that broke the camel's back. 9/11
was the trigger.

The law suit is not only about their lies but about their covering it up.
The other articles referenced above are about their lie about a murdered bicyclist,
stating he was on a drug buy so as to cover the truth that yes, you can be randomly
killed on the streets of Minneapolis. The Mayor and Chief would have
us believe it only happens to gang bangers. Therefore, if it happens
to you, you must be a gangbanger.

An inversion is being corrected in Minneapolis. Martin Luther
King, Jr. asked that we be judged by the content of our character, and not by
the color of our skin. The city has long inverted that, standing it on
its head: judge us by the color of our skin (white is wonderful) as we
lack character in civil rights. This law suit turns what had been turned
on its head back on its feet.

The city's response before and since: lying.

Not a sign of good character. Just like the Police Chief of Nottingham
in Robin Hood. The people don't count. Especially the residents
of Minneapolis' inner city Sherwood Forest.

Our Nottingham nemises has a flawed theory. The Mayor, Chief and City
look the part but are fake; they can't be trusted. Hence the PCRC; hence
the call for receivership that would put the police department under federal
control until the city gets it right with the MPD. The chief and mayor
live in a dream world. Whatever they have "dropped" with Tim O'Leary,
they have tuned out the facts and have created a dream world.

Let's remember that at first, civil rights dealt with making up for the results
of 400 years of servitude and not being allowed to be educated and prosper.
Sadly, that is the situation still in the inner cities.

Civil rights has been replaced by special interest group rights, with so many
now classified as "minorities" that the head of Minneapolis' Civil Rights Department,
a Black man, brags that Minneapolis can meet its hiring requirements in terms
of minorities without hiring any Blacks.

In 1991, the Strib ran a tremendous series indicating how racist Minnesota
is (that is, not just disliking or fearing Blacks, but actually discriminating
in the sense of preventing Blacks from doing things solely on account of the
color of their skin, things like get schooling, jobs, housing, etc).

And what was done? Not much. The key term? Minorities.

What did "minorities" originally mean? Blacks. African-Americans.
Negroes. That became too much. It is one thing to accept
equality in the mind, it is another to live it. So what has Minneapolis
done? Gone, along with the national trend to define minorities as any
group not white male, so that, as we have reported in our columns, the civil
rights department has bragged that they can meet minority hiring requirements
without hiring Blacks. And so they don't, denying equal access and equal
opportunity.

And so "diversity" is the new code word for segregation. Diversity now
means there are Blacks. And in school after school in this country, more
and more are becoming less and less integrated. But they represent diversity,
as they have Blacks (even if it now means mostly Blacks).

The city is surprised by this suit not because of what it contains, but that
five officers were strong enough, bold enough, and of character enough, to confront
them after long trying to deal with this without a law suit, as the stories
linked above report. The city has long had the attitude, "Bring it on."
Now they are surprised that these five men are man enough to bring it.

You need not only eyes to see but the desire to see. You not only need
ears to hear but the desire to hear. The city has played blind man's
bluff. These officers have decided its time to play pin the tail on the
donkey.

It should not be a surprise that 5 Black police officers sued the city and
that, as a result, the PCRC (Police Community Relations Council) has called
for the department to be placed in receivership and run by the feds.
That this is an unexpected surprise felt by the City (Mayor, Police Chief, City
Council, Civil Rights Department, Black organizations), reveals how much they
felt they had Blacks in their place and that they could continue the status
quo of discrimination with the help of the Black organizations that could "deliver"
Blacks to them.

It is also a comment on how they ignored the warnings I provided them
in my book, The Minneapolis Story , especially Chapter 16, "The Status
Quo Future: Same 'ol, same 'ol." The preview I discussed of the
future in that chapter is now here. Indeed, the chapter headings is "Unrest,
Disturbance: The Status Quo Price Minneapolis is Willing to Pay"
to keep the status quo. With this law suit, that status quo is finally
broken and smashed.

So I am not surprised to hear back stage reports that the Mayor and the Chief
and the Civil Rights Department Director are all blaming me. That's like
blaming the rock for breaking the window that the kid tossed through it, or
like blaming the California fire destruction on fire instead on the arsonists
in some cases or the pollcies in most that refuse to allow the kindling to be
removed from its "natural" setting and thus be fuel for any fire.

As the 45 page law suit points out, the city has been tossing lots of rocks,
and the Police Department has been letting the kindling pile up on the precinct
floors until this combustion finally took place, feeding on all the incidents
of racism and discrimination over the 20 year service life of these officers.

What goes unsaid, but needs to be highlighted, is that this is no secret to
Chief Dolan. He has been on the force for 22 years. He is part
and parcel of the good 'ol boys of the white officers, and his actions and this
suit highlight this fact.

If the stakes were not so high and the consequences not so troubling, it would
be laughable for the city, especially the chief, to claim I have some kind of
power to cloud peoples' minds, like The Shadow, or twist them like pretzels
like Plastic Man, or being stealthy like the Invisible Woman, or bust through
their walls like the Thing or burn down their public facades like Johnny Storm.
I am not the Fantastic Four. But the Mayor, the chief, the civil
rights director, and the City Council are the unfabulous four when it comes
to failing to serve the whole community, concentrating on the white part and
discriminating against the Black part.

I'm just one guy, a community activist, focused on speaking the truth for all,
taking one step at a time, one word at a time, one day at a time, one column
at a time, laying out my case regarding what Minneapolis does to violate the
civil rights of its Black citizens. So when they attribute special
powers to me, they think they are off the hook. Sorry folks.

The City has populated its pond with incident after incident of racism, discrimination,
and hostility. They then put the hooks on the line, baited their
own hooks with their own racist and discriminatory acts, and cast their lines,
only to be surprised to catch this whale of their own creation. I'm just
the reporter on the fishing beat.

What is happening is that this law suit (which is not by me or about me) serves
as affirmation of what I've been saying over the years. Minneapolis is
a racist city that believes it can act on that racism and discriminate against
Blacks and deny them equal access and equal opportunity, especially in education,
jobs, and housing.

I wrote a book in 2002 detailing this. Copies were given to the Mayor
and city Council and Strib and the University and HHH, Black organizations,
etc. It was spurned by the City, the Black organizations, and the Black
leadership/ministerial forum, all of whom told people not to buy it and not
to read it.
The NAACP expelled me for writing it (not for what I wrote but that I wrote).
They took no corrective action. The pressure just continued
to build. The dam had to break at some point. Now it has.
So this law suit should not come as a surprise.

The Minneapolis Spokesman Recorder has carried my columns where, on a weekly
basis since 2003, I have detailed the city's racism and discrimination, especially
in the areas of jobs and the treatment of Black police. So this law suit should
not come as a surprise.

As the spokesman for the Black Police Officers Association since 1996, I have
been able to write about this. But the city took no corrective action.
The pressure just continued to build. So this law suit should not come
as a surprise.

This web site has carried a web log, "Closing the Gaps," about the gaps in
Minneapolis between Blacks and whites regarding equal access and equal opportunity
in education, jobs, housing, public safety, environment, governance, and ethics.
It has been open to all. But the city took no corrective action. The pressure
just continued to build. So this law suit should not come as a surprise.

This law suit will have a major impact on city politics and race relations.
That too should not come as a surprise, especially if the city maintains,
despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that it has done no wrong
and need take no corrective action. The last time they took this stance
it led to the feds making them engage in mediation that, given their attempts
to sabotage the mediation process, resulted in the PCRC. Should they
continue their same 'ol same 'ol, they risk the next, predictable step, the
police department being put into receivership.

And saying they'll be good boys in the future is not enough. They have
to show it in action and by institutionalizing the needed changes.

As I noted at the top of this entry, Martin Luther King, Jr., famously
asked that we be judged by our character, not by the color of our skin.
The law suit about police discrimination in the department, illustrates the
need for such judgment. You see, the city is asking us to judge it on
the basis of its skin color, not by its character. Why? Because
it can demonstrate its whiteness but it can't demonstrate its character.
Why?

Because the City has chosen to lie. It won't, and therefore can't,
demonstrate character. And that is one of the city's biggest character
flaws: official lying by lying officials. Lying for decades, lying
for years, lying for months. And in their press conferences cited above,
the city officials lied again.

The law suit says Blacks are discriminated against in both hiring and in treatment
once hired. The City denies it. They lie, as the figures shown
above demonstrate. Because they view discriminating behavior as normal,
they can't see it, and instead fall back on the defense of numbers, a percentage,
as if because they have hired minorities (less than half of which are Black)
that it means they are an organization that sings Kumbaya and does trust falls.

Why did so many press conferences abound the week of Decemer 4 th ?
Because this is a historic law suit, a suit against the police department that
has resulted in the most embarrassing thing that can happen to a city administration:
having the call put out for the putting of your Police Department under
receivership (taken over and run by the Federal Government). Press conferences
were held by the PCRC, by the MPD, by the Mayor, by City Council members.
The law suit calls for a day of reckoning for all of the discrimination in the
department over the decades in general and against the five suing police officers
in particular.

The police have been one of our four main areas of concern.
We would hope that parallel suits could be done for education (by students and
their parents), jobs (5 columns on this are highlighted at the top of the page),
and housing (of which the Hollman taking, with NAACP collusion, remains the
sad model of what not to do).

Posted December 14, 2007, 10:30 a.m.

Ron hosts “Black Focus” on Channel 17, MTN-TV, Sundays,
5-6 pm. Formerly head of the Minneapolis Civil Rights Commission and the
Urban League, he continues his “watchdog” role for Minneapolis.
Order his book, hear his voice, read his solution papers, and read his
between columns “web log” at www.TheMinneapolisStory.com.

Permission is granted to reproduce The Minneapolis Story columns, blog entires and solution papers. Please
cite the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder and www.TheMinneapolisStory.com for the columns. Please
cite www.TheMinneapolisStory.com for blog entries and solution papers.